Yimbaya Maranoa is a First Nations-led project initiated through conversations with Indigenous and non-Indigenous Maranoa residents and artists in 2018. The project has continued with Traditional Custodians Vernessa Fien, Vicki Saunders, Saraeva Mitchell, Aunty Lynette Nixon, in conjunction with artist Jude Taggart Roberts, and realised through Yimbaya Maranoa, formerly known as the Remapping Mitchell Arts Collective.
The creative group formed a connection through their memories to the Maranoa and Indigenous families in the region whose stories continue to inspire and draw them back to the river. Yimbaya Maranoa Arts Collective has evolved through the continued dedication, support and development of established and emerging artists and creatives. This includes Gunggari, Bidjara, and other Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists who live in the Maranoa or share a connection to the region. The group numbers vary, depending on participants’ availability and skill sets and the project’s requirements. The project revolves around the theme of the Maranoa and the collective stories of living on, being on, and listening to this unique country.
Through an ongoing series of immersive gatherings on Country, the collective is producing a living archive1 of arts related works, stories, and perspectives currently absent or at least less visible in contemporary and historical accounts of the region. The Yimbaya projects have demonstrated the capacity of the arts to connect communities and to allow stories to be told and shared in purposeful, creative, and engaging ways.
Camping residencies are held at the intersection of places of significance to First Nations Custodians and European histories. The sites follow water courses along the Maranoa River and are also part of the route taken by Major Thomas Mitchell’s expedition team and Wiradjuri guide Yuranigh on Mitchell’s 4th surveying journey in 1846.
Artists at the waterhole. Photo by Jude Roberts.
The first camp was held on the confluence of the Maranoa, Womalilla and Amby Creeks during NAIDOC week 2018. In keeping with the NAIDOC theme ‘ngulalma ngalinda – Because of her we can’ the project recognized, acknowledged, and celebrated the contributions of Aboriginal women and Elders in relation to the spiritual and physical connections of the river. The Maranoa is a region of cultural, spiritual, and environmental significance linked to Booringa (‘place of fire’ in Gunggari language).
The projects provide a rare opportunity for audiences to experience unique and culturally active interdisciplinary collaboration. The collective of artists work both in traditional artmaking mediums and innovative technology to deliver artworks inside and outside the gallery spaces. Taking a multi-media approach, the collective highlights, celebrates and revises the Maranoa’s layers of history and story, through video, audio, works on paper and canvas, weaving, textiles, sculpture, and photography. The project’s uniqueness lies in is its core values of meeting, creating, sharing, collaborating on Country, and the bringing together of participants from diverse backgrounds to form a one-of-a-kind project.
1 – A “living archive” (Rhodes, 2014) is a collection of materials presented in a way that allows for the expression, exhibition, documentation and preservation of a sentiment or movement in a particular community.